


technicolour

by essenceofheroism



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, andrew x neil - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 01:45:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7247194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/essenceofheroism/pseuds/essenceofheroism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil and the mirror had never been best friends. The mirror was a necessity; making sure the roots of his hair still held someone else’s name, making sure he didn’t look like the past he was trying to escape.</p><p>Let's talk about colour. Let’s talk about what Neil Josten has tried to escape for so long, and let’s whisper about how it’s all laughing at him right now, when after all his attachments to hues of greys and shades of black, he is doused and dripping in colour. The colours say to him, “You are a work of art."</p>
            </blockquote>





	technicolour

You were never a fan of colour. It was distracting and made you stand out when all you were programmed to do, all you were desperately begging to do, was to settle into the threadwork of everyone else’s lives. You were a shadow, leaching off of the colours of the lives and souls around you. You erased yourself, then changed yourself, then erased again, to the point where your existence was so diluted, you weren't sure you were even real. You were nothing; a grey space, a hollow name, an empty promise of a threat. Now, they call you Neil Josten and right in this moment, you are bursting with colour. 

-

Neil and the mirror had never been best friends. The mirror was a necessity; making sure the roots of his hair still held someone else’s name, making sure he didn’t look like the past he was trying to escape. Then, Riko had came, and the stark ‘4’ on his face was enough of a repulsion to look away. Neil had always known his father’s people wanted to destroy him, he just hadn’t anticipated that they’d ruin him and them make his body a souvenir of their work. It has been one month since Lola had happened. One month of avoiding the mirror like his life depended on it, one month of only ever making it out of the shower long enough before Andrew’s hand or his voice would drag him out long before the mirror became a concern. All until today. It is 3:43 am and Neil stands in front of the mirror long enough that he thinks his reflection is smiling with a strange cruelty at him.

-  
Let’s talk about colour. Let’s talk about what Neil Josten has tried to escape for so long, and let’s whisper about how it’s all laughing at him right now, when after all his attachments to hues of greys and shades of black, he is doused and dripping in colour. The colours say to him, “You are a work of art."

Blood red, red blood, flaring at your lips, breaking past the tattered skin, slipping past the cracks in your bottom lip. You are red. 

Buised boy, blue blossoms on your bones, a bud of blue pain darkening into a thundercloud of agony, black dancing shadows paint you with the secrets of a past where your father crushed you under the weight of his icy blue eyes, and then his fists. Blue became you. 

Orange, an infernal orange, bursting like flames of a sin against your skin. fire no longer licks the imprint of ink underneath the ferocious scars but it burns, you think, this orange reminder of victory that you lived. It burns, and you are burning.

White hot; they call it agony. You feel it pulse and thrum under your fingertips, Broken boy. You are fractured. You are fearful. Fire sleeps in your eyelids and a veiled agony arises. You breath freezes in your lungs, or in the trunk of a car with her. “Lola, please.” Her lipstick stain is just another bruise in your memory, her hips tightening around your torso; just another cage. Does your fear of the dark ease in this titanium whiteness? 

“Neil, look at me.” You’re getting lost again. Not again, please, not again. You are lucky to be the air in his lungs, so in the process of saving himself, he saves you as well. You open your eyes. You will be the death of him. 

His eyes are wild, they are hazel, and in this particular moment, they are only for you. Hazel feels like home today. It feels stable, it feels safe, it feels familiar, like his fingers against your throat. You are a torn masterpiece, frayed and still unravelling, but hazel is okay. A dawning realization simmers in your veins suddenly, the distant understanding that you sold yourself once to nights of haunted screams and days of broken bones for his eyes. Just so they wouldn’t be empty and hollow, just so they wouldn’t touch him. He is lucky to be the reason you breathe, because if your world succumbed to ash and ice, you would go back, and back, and back for him, because hazel is home now. He will be the death of you. 

Golden, it feels like peace when your fingertips tangle in his hair, burned and bleached to a burnt gold and you can breathe. You are gold.  
-

Let’s talk about black and white, about the simplicity of “Yes or no?”  
Let’s talk about how your ‘yes’ is as obvious as it is hungry; it is a call for salvation. He saves you without hesitation. 

-

His lips against yours are mahogany swirling in the pit of your stomach, slow and sure, and it feels like contentment. It isn’t exciting or fluttering like the brush of butterflies inside your gut; it isn’t anything like any shadow of “love” is supposed to feel like. It is a sigh of relief, cool cotton against your skin, cool keys in your palm. Stars burn inside your mouth, and are born inside his. Galaxies and constellations are small, so small, l when you think of the distances you’d run to have this again, to find him again, in another life perhaps, where breathing came easier than running. This is mahogany, like thick warm honey glazing your throat, mahogany like a subdued sunset, mahogany like the warmth rushing in his lips, seeping into your frigid skin. Mahanogy, like a final breath of pleasure, something like stability. Like his name in your breath. 

 

Neil Josten is not a fan of colour. That is not because he is trying to hide; he no longer evades colour as a mechanic to survive; he hurls himself to victory clad in the most ferocious shade of orange. He sports eyes the colour of a chilling winter and his hair is bright enough to be distinct. Despite his race away from colours, the colours have caught up to him and he thinks that maybe that’s finally okay. Everything he tries to run from eventually outruns him, and he’s learning to be okay with that too. He is still not a fan of bright colours, but he thinks the gold of Andrew’s hair, the hazel of his eyes and the mahogany of this mouth are bold enough to fade the others out. 

He is real, he exists, and he is painted in hues of “Stay” and cold keys and ragged kisses and rooftop cigarettes and whispers of trust and Andrew’s hands. He is layered in shades of home, and when Andrew says, “Neil, breathe for me”, he is not afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Like always, kudos and comments are appreciated! :)  
> Find me on tumblr at ohliverfelicity


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